


heart and time

by beardsley



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier holds out one gloved hand and touches Steve's face and for the first time since they had met in the future there is emotion in his eyes, even hidden behind the domino mask, and he says — he says: 'Remember who you are.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart and time

**Author's Note:**

> This AU splinters from _that_ moment in the original Winter Soldier arc (but can easily work within the movieverse as well). Because sometimes asking yourself, "yeah, but what if?" gives results that are kind of terrifying. Thanks to haipollai's encouragement and cheerleading. All the good things here come from her, and by "good" I mean "awful". There might be more forthcoming? I don't know. Maybe.
> 
> It's a dark story even by my standards, and if you know my writing at all then you should know to take that warning seriously. No spoilers, but be prepared for graphic violence, dubious consent and a lot of ugliness.

In 1954 the KGB storm an abandoned NKVD research facility near the Finland border. They are looking for weapons, experiments and decommissioned projects that might prove useful. They are looking for something concrete.

They find it.

~

The Cosmic Cube shatters into a thousand pieces like it's made of glass, and Steve can do nothing but stare in mute horror as his last hope of saving Bucky for all the times he'd failed him goes up in smoke. His heart is hammering in his chest and it's been years since he'd felt like this: like he's watching an explosion in slow motion and there is nothing left to do but let it happen.

'Steve.'

Still on his knees he's breathing hard and shaking like a leaf, and it takes a moment before the word registers. Steve jerks back as if slapped. He lifts his eyes to Bucky — to the Winter Soldier — to the man before him, who could be both, who could be neither, who could be anyone. Who will never be —

The Winter Soldier called him by name, and Steve doesn't understand. He can feel the beginning of a migraine throbbing behind his right eye, heavy and suffocating, and it takes everything in him to not just fall to his knees and throw up. Half-consciously he wonders if Sharon still has a chance of getting away; if Sam does. Steve is done.

He doesn't have the strength to fight, and doesn't move as the Winter Soldier makes his way towards him and holsters his gun. He holds out one gloved hand and touches Steve's face and for the first time since they had met in the future there is emotion in his eyes, even hidden behind the domino mask, and he says — he says:

'Remember who you are.'

~

It's winter.

~

The year is 2014 and Nick Fury is alone, laid out on a bed with tubes and an IV drip and god knows what else, hooked up to a heart monitor that beeps slowly and steadily. His right arm on top of the white covers is in a cast and he's bruised and beat-up, more than Steve has seen him except maybe back during the war.

There is a click of the door being opened and closed and Steve glances sideways to see Dum-Dum leaning against the wall.

'What happened?' Steve asks. His voice comes out hoarse.

Dum-Dum shrugs. 'We're chasing down every lead we have. I put Sharon in charge.' He follows Steve's gaze to the heart monitor, the ventilator, the IV. 'Listen, I gotta ask. You, Nick, Sharon and Wilson — you were working on something together. Could it have anything to do with this?'

Only five people know about the Red Skull's death. Only three have seen his body on a gurney and dissected in search of proof of a false identity. Sharon's kidnapping and the Philadelphia nuke are all classified. (The sniper obscured in smoke and ghostly red light from the fires and explosions; his name is in no official documents.) Steve's apartment is now clean of the stack of files labelled _Project Winter Soldier_. It might as well have never been there.

Steve breathes through the migraine he can feel building up.

'No,' he says. 'I'm sorry.'

~

It's winter.

Steve Rogers wakes up with a splitting headache, a metallic aftertaste in his mouth and he clenches and unclenches his right fist without realising he's doing it. Camp Lehigh is a ruin around him, rotten leaves and derelict barracks.

It's winter and the year is —

~

'How did they break you?' Nick Fury manages to ask.

The Winter Soldier's mouth twists in something like a grimace, but there is no real emotion behind it. 'Time,' he says, his hand around Fury's throat tightening. 'Dedication. Everyone breaks eventually. Everyone.'

'Steve Rogers —'

'Steve Rogers isn't here.'

~

The year is 2005.

'Mr Reznik, Mr Brankovich,' the scientist welcomes them. She's wearing an off-white lab coat, its pockets filled with pens and pen lights and wires. Her name is Olga Kolar and she has been working for friends of the Russian spy underground ever since her medical licence has been revoked due to malpractice and unethical conduct. She was deemed too unpatriotic to be of any use to the KGB back during the Cold War, but Steve isn't looking for devotion or loyalty. He and Bucky know where Dr Kolar's family live and where her youngest daughter goes to school, and that is all the bargaining insurance they need.

She doesn't smile as she passes them to get to the gurney and machines in the centre of the room. 'If the patient would please strip,' she says, nodding at Steve then at a rumpled hospital gown laid out on the gurney. Without waiting for him to comply, she starts setting up the machinery.

Steve feels Bucky's eyes on him as he changes; he can almost feel Bucky's tension radiating off him in waves. He's there as soon as Steve sits down on the gurney, but he doesn't touch and he doesn't speak. Dr Kolar ignores him completely. Her attention is focussed on Steve as she guides him to lie down and starts hooking him up to the devices.

'Would you like me to outline the procedure for you again, Mr Reznik?'

Steve says, in carefully accented English, 'No, that's all right. I remember.'

'Very well. As we agreed, I will not be here for the initial memory alteration process. I have spoken to your…bodyguard, and he will call me only if anything goes wrong.' She sticks Steve with a needle he vaguely hopes is clean. 'I can not reverse the procedure, of course. I know neither of the post-hypnotic triggers. Once the procedure is complete, you will be out of my hands. Now, I can begin when you are ready.'

Steve can hear Bucky swallow. He doesn't look at him.

'I'm ready, doctor.'

The sensory deprivation mask is big and unwieldy, but after Dr Kolar secures the straps and activates the mechanism — everything goes black. Steve can only hear (his breathing; Bucky's breathing, faster; a soft whirring from the machines and an even softer hum from the pipes above), and waits for Dr Kolar's footsteps to fade as she leaves the room.

And then he hears Bucky's voice, low and as steady as his breathing isn't: ' _The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I_ —'

~

Steve wakes up.

He wakes up gasping for air and barely makes it to the bathroom before he's retching. He tastes ashes on his tongue, ashes and gunpowder. He doesn't turn on the light, going by the sliver of moonlight falling in through the door and catching in the mirror.

He rinses his mouth in the sink and looks up automatically, and even in the dark he can see enough of his reflection that a shiver runs down his spine. He traces the tips of his fingers over the mirror's cool surface.

He had a dream. In it he wore a plain black suit, not a uniform. He dreamt about a hotel and a thin manila folder which first page was blank. He dreamt in shades of red and red and red.

He swallows, and the movement of his adam's apple stands out in the grey of predawn. He flattens his palm against the mirror, and —

— and he comes to on his knees. The blood on his knuckles is black in the dim light. Pieces of the mirror are on the floor around him, and Steve can feel himself shaking the same way he used to be able to feel a sickness coming in days beforehand: a slow burn in his veins and in his bones and in every breath he took. He's breathing fast and shallow now.

There is blood all over the bathroom tiles. Steve rakes his fingers through his hair and breathes in, then out. His head is killing him.

Ten minutes later he's trying to wash away the taste of painkillers with gin.

He dreams about —

~

It's winter.

Steve Rogers wakes up with a splitting headache, a metallic aftertaste in his mouth and he clenches and unclenches his right fist without realising he's doing it. Camp Lehigh is a ruin around him, rotten leaves and derelict barracks.

It's winter and the year is 2014.

~

'Where was she found?' he asks, breaking the silence in the briefing room. The tension is palpable, tension and something like fear.

Tony crosses his arms over his chest, shoulders hunched. 'Her own apartment. It was a bloodbath. She didn't go down without a fight. SHIELD are still securing the scene, trying to find any traces of the killer's blood or hair or — anything. Anything useful.' He runs his hands through his hair and breathes in, then out. Steve doesn't ask if he'd seen the body.

Tony reaches across the desk to pick up his tablet, and flips through it for a second before handing it to Steve. It's a crime scene photo, full colour, high quality.

The body is spread out on the bed, stripped down to just underwear, arms and legs thrown out wide in an undignified sprawl. The left arm is twisted at an unnatural angle, and there is a sliver of bone peeking from under the skin of the right shin. Blood is soaking the sheets and the carpet underneath the bed. It's splattered over the walls, and over it written in red are only two words:

 _ONLY ONE_.

Steve flips to the next photo, a close-up of a neck slashed open. It looks like the wound that was fatal; the cut is deep enough that through the bright red of arterial blood he can see the trachea and what looks to be the spine. The force of the strike was nearly enough to decapitate. The next five photos all chronicle the other wounds and injuries: left arm broken in three places, right hand shattered as if stomped on, right leg broken; cuts made by a serrated blade, of varying depth and size. Death delivered with single-minded brutality and determination.

There are defensive wounds as well. _She didn't go down without a fight_.

'Any idea who did this?' Steve asks, voice hoarse.

Tony leans back against the desk. 'The message is all we have to go on right now. We have to assume it's someone from her past, from before she was working with us. The problem is, Nick is the only one who knew her back then.'

'And he's comatose,' Steve finishes.

Tony just nods. 'Someone is picking us off one by one, and they're doing it in a pretty smart order.'

Just then Steve feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. He doesn't have to pick up; he knows what the message is and who it is from.

'Who do you think will be targeted next?' he asks. With Tony looking him in the eye, it's the easiest thing in the world to take out the small syringe he's been carrying in the front pocket of his uniform. (The uniform that feels ill-fitting and too bright; last night he dreamt about a plain black suit, plain white shirt, plain black tie; he dreamt about a hotel in Germany that had eight exits and four hundred guests.)

'You're Captain America and I got saddled with running SHIELD because Dum-Dum Dugan is a lazy piece of shit, so honestly? I'm thinking you or me.'

'Good guess.'

Tony blinks. 'Sorry?'

Another message on his phone. Without checking Steve knows the security cameras in the briefing room are set to play a feedback loop of the past fifteen minutes. Without checking he knows that somewhere in New York, a brilliant marksman is drowning in his own blood and Dum-Dum Dugan will wake up to a SHIELD tactical squad busting down his door to arrest him for treason.

Tony doesn't see the attack coming. He's good, but Steve is faster and stronger and it takes precisely four moves before he has Tony slammed into a wall with a forearm against his trachea and the needle puncturing his neck. Tony tries to talk, but the pressure is too heavy.

'Tetrodotoxin,' says Steve. He can feel Tony going numb, then limp. He can feel Tony's heart rate spiking, both thanks to adrenaline and the neurotoxin. 'You'll suffocate in a few minutes, but the paralysis should make it painless. I'm sorry. You were a good friend, Tony.'

It doesn't take long.

It doesn't take long for Steve to wipe the briefing room clean of fingerprints and trace evidence.

~

The year is 2013 and there is a stack of files on Steve Rogers' coffee table, labelled _Project Winter Soldier_. He reads through it and knows, in his bones, that it's wrong.

It can't be true.

Bucky can't be the Winter Soldier.

~

If for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, what is the opposite of Captain America? What is the opposite of Steve Rogers?

Who is the opposite of Steve Rogers?

~

'Forty nine,' says Steve. His voice echoes off the naked concrete walls of the small room. Water is soaking his rolled-up sleeve. 'Fifty.'

He shifts his grip on the back of Bucky's neck to get a fistful of his hair and pulls him up, out of the basin. Water splashes everywhere, across the front of Steve's trousers. He pays it no heed. What he's paying attention to is Bucky, naked, hands tied behind his back, kneeling on the now wet concrete floor. He gasps for air, chest heaving, hair plastered across his face. His eyes are shut. He's shaking.

The most important part of operant conditioning is to consistently reward desired behaviour. This is what they were taught at the facility. This is what their handlers showed them. Steve crouches down next to Bucky, cups the back of his neck in reassurance, and smiles.

'You did good.'

Bucky opens his eyes. Even naked and shaking, deprived of oxygen for long enough he must be half-conscious, bruised and still forgetting his own name more often than not, he looks at Steve the way he's always looked at him. The dead loyalty is not unquestioning and it's not unconditional, but it is earned and underneath it is something much more effective than fear or obligation or even respect.

It's trust.

~

The room is not particularly clean, but for a basement-level training facility it could have been a lot worse. Condensation gathers around the dirty pipes running along the ceiling, and everything not used often has a thick layer of grime and dust on it. Five mats, tied together, cover the concrete floor and an assortment of weapons is stacked against the far wall. Everything but projectiles; they have the firing range for those.

The year is — 

~

The year is 1954 and Steve blocks a roundhouse kick that would have cracked a normal person's ribs. He feints to the left, strikes — connects.

'Two-one,' he says. He wipes the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. 'Again.'

Flat on his back, Bucky is breathing hard. He picks himself up and off the mats, but Steve kicks his legs from under him before he can stand up; Bucky dodges left and into a crouch. He has a split lip and there is a gash on his forehead slowly oozing blood over his right eye. But he's holding a knife in a reverse grip, and it's Steve's knife — he must have taken it when Steve was throwing him.

Good.

Steve relaxes into a wider stance and raises his eyebrows.

Bucky comes at him without holding back. Anything else, and Steve wouldn't think twice about crippling him — at best. He keeps his eyes on the knife and Bucky's left arm, his two advantages, and he's ready for the first strike — knocks it off aim, and bites back a pained noise when his forearm connects with the ungiving steel of Bucky's left arm.

He parries the second strike and has to immediately block another; Bucky switches grip mid-air, catching the knife before Steve can make a grab for it. It's not easy in close quarters, and both their breathing echoes in the empty space of the training room. Third strike and Steve moves with it, and the momentum carries Bucky forward until all Steve needs is a push to send him off-balance.

The knife clatters to the floor, off the mats. Bucky lands on his side with a gasp, but before he can roll away Steve straddles his waist and aims a punch that could shatter Bucky's jaw. The bionic arm saves him and Steve has to grit his teeth against the pain. He lets Bucky roll them over, and feels —

Neither of them are wearing armour, and Steve feels just how hard Bucky is. He feels it and sees the realisation in Bucky's eyes, the heat spilling over his face.

He leans over Bucky, low enough that their noses are almost touching, and whispers, voice low and heavy with exertion: 'Fight through it.'

Bucky closes his eyes and swallows a strangled moan.

'Enough,' sounds from the doorway.

Steve rolls away and gets to his feet in one move.

'Winter Soldier.' The handler waits for Steve to salute before turning to Bucky. 'I hope Number Four's training is progressing well.'

Steve lifts the corner of his mouth in a faint smirk. 'He's very good, sir.'

~

The year is 1972 and they are free, and the KGB has decommissioned Department X altogether after scientists and operatives kept dying in seemingly random circumstances. It's 1972 and they are free, and one day they will set fire to the organisation that bred them to be soldiers in the first place just as they set fire to the organisation that tried to take away their names.

Steve remembers every time the sensory deprivation mask has been used on him for initial conditioning, followed by days or weeks spent in Room 001. The memories never took. The brainwashing —

The torture —

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and Steve knows he is the opposite of Captain America. He knows, with a detached certainty devoid of any real emotion or regret, that he has been bent and broken and remade into something new. Something better, maybe, or maybe something more dangerous.

The year is 1972 and Steve leans over Bucky, low enough that their noses are almost touching, and whispers, voice low and heavy with exertion: 'Get up on your knees.'

Bucky does. He follows orders; he trusts. They are both sweaty and breathing hard from the spar, blood and violence singing just beneath their skins, and Bucky gets off the mats and up on his knees and undoes Steve's trousers with hands that don't shake.

Most days he still wakes up and doesn't remember his name for the first two hours or so. The fall and the explosion haven't been kind to him, just a kid with no enhancements and only enough training to be lethal but not enough to know how to live. But he had followed Steve's orders at the underground training facility and he had followed Steve out of Department X. He adjusts his morality and he adjusts his life to where the needle is pointing, and the needle is always pointing at Steve.

He goes down on Steve and enjoys it. When Steve runs his hands through Bucky's hair, he leans into the touch.

Afterwards, when they spar again, Steve breaks his collar bone.

~

The year is 2005. The Winter Soldier and his right hand man wait in an underground laboratory; there is a gurney in the centre of the room, surrounded by machinery. All of it is clearly homemade: no identifying marks, logos or names on any of the devices. Everything looks well-used and not very well-preserved. It is still probably much safer than the technology used by Department X in 1954.

Steve isn't here for comfort and piece of mind. He's here for results.

Next to him, Bucky is tense. Steve checks his watch — five minutes — and turns to Bucky. He knows Bucky won't question orders, but he has to wonder what makes him so nervous. Inevitable separation? They've worked together for decades now, each and every year drenched in blood, time measured by bodies they left behind. There were times —

There were times when Steve left without a word for weeks or months at a time, making sure Bucky couldn't track him down. Everything is, after all, a test. Loyalty is a process.

This is something else.

'Have you talked to that Belova woman?' Steve asks, even though he knows the answer.

Bucky nods. 'I'm meeting her in two weeks. She's going to be loyal for as long as we're on the same side.'

'Did she want payment?'

'Just asked that we give her access to the operative who defected. Said she has her own score to settle.'

Steve hums. Personal vendettas always get tricky, but he knows Bucky will be able to deal with anything. And who knows; maybe once the mind-wipe is complete and the Avengers find Captain America, maybe Steve will make his own friends to get their Russian ally close to her own target.

'How long will you be gone?' Bucky asks. They talked about this, too, but Steve has a feeling Bucky needs to fill the silence in the basement; maybe he needs distraction from all the machinery before them, all of it reminiscent of their days at Department X. The sensory deprivation mask looks nearly the same as the one used on them in 1954.

It looks nearly the same as the one Steve used on Bucky after he got them away.

'Give me three years,' says Steve. He considered a decade; time is relative to people like them, people wired to be fixed immovable points in time and space. Still, things could go wrong outside of their careful planning. Three years would be enough to make friends and allies, enough to get close to people — some who used to know them, before Department X, and some new. Steve wonders how Nick Fury is doing these days as director of the world's least conspicuous covert organisation. He'll find out soon enough, with his memories ending at the moment of the explosion that should have killed Bucky and the fall that should have killed him.

'You know what to do with Red Skull,' he says. Bucky just nods. 'You know how to get on SHIELD's radar. The fake files on the Winter Soldier project will have enough triggers that they'll start the recovery process. Then you'll just have to get close enough to me to say the words.'

The door to the laboratory opens and closes and there's a click of flat heels on the stone floor.

'Mr Reznik, Mr Brankovich,' the scientist welcomes them.

~

The man who is not the Winter Soldier, who is Bucky but can't be the Winter Soldier, holds out one gloved hand and touches Steve's face and for the first time since they had met in the future there is emotion in his eyes, even hidden behind the domino mask, and he says — he says:

'Remember who you are.'

~

Steve wakes up with a splitting headache, a metallic aftertaste in his mouth and he clenches and unclenches his right fist without realising he's doing it. Camp Lehigh is a ruin around him, rotten leaves and derelict barracks. He wakes up on the ground, fighting to breathe.

It's winter and the year is 2014 and his first instinct was to run, suffocating on memories of decades he should have spent on ice, choking on the knowledge of who he is.

Bucky stands over him with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, and Steve knows — because he can't not know, not now — that if he takes a wrong step or says the wrong thing, Bucky will not hesitate; he'll kill him without a second thought. Steve knows, because he was the one who gave the order.

He gets up, unsteady on his feet. His head is killing him and there are black spots dancing before his eyes and there is darkness at the edges of his vision. Memory triggers always leave you weak and vulnerable, doesn't matter if it's sophisticated modern technology or the crude Department X mind control from the mid-50s. Steve tries not to wonder what Bucky thinks, right now. He tries not to wonder just how closely he's courting death.

'Nick Fury,' he says. He rubs his face with both hands. 'He's gonna find out soon. We have to — we have to take him out.'

After a short moment of silence, Bucky breathes out. He holsters his gun.

~

It's winter. The year is 2014.

Steve Rogers remembers who he is.


End file.
